Commentary: The changing face of Syria

Wolf D. Fuhrig

Published
4:08 am CST, Sunday, November 27, 2016

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I twice visited Syria with a group of college professors sponsored by the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations. Each time, we traveled freely throughout the country between the Golan Heights in the south and Aleppo near the Turkish border in the north, and between the convent of Saint Thekla at Ma’aloula near the Lebanese border and the wide-open Syrian desert in the east.

My first tour of Syria occurred during the presidency of Hafez Al Assad in 1996; my second in 2000 after his son, Bashar, had succeeded his father.

Slightly larger than North Dakota, Syria is bordered by Lebanon and Israel on the west, Turkey on the north, Iraq on the east, and Jordan on the south. Coastal Syria is a narrow plain. Behind it lies a range of coastal mountains. Syria highest point is Mount Hermon (9,232 feet) near the Lebanese border.

Ethnically, the majority of Syria’s population are Arabs.

Eighty-seven percent are Muslims, of which 74 percent are Sunni, who are mostly ethnic Arabs, but also Kurds, Circassians and Turcomans. Thirty percent are Arab Alewites and Shiites, 10 percent Christians of Arab, Assyrian and Armenian ethnicity, and 3 percent are Druze, a sect related to Shia Islam.

In October 1973, under Hafez al-Assad’s leadership, Syria allied itself with Egypt to recapture territory lost to Israel but in the fourth Arab-Israeli War, they fought without success. In the mid-1970s, Syria sent 20,000 troops to support Muslim Lebanese in their armed conflict with Christian militants supported by Israel.

Syrian troops frequently clashed with Israeli troops during Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon and remained thereafter as occupiers of large portions of Lebanon.

Tadmor Prison became the scene of the killing of an estimated 1,000 prisoners on orders of Hafez al-Assad’s brother, Rifaat al-Assad, on the day after the Muslim Brotherhood failed in an attempt to assassinate his brother.

Hafez al-Assad (1930-2000) was an Alawite and air force general who took over as president of Syria in 1971 and served for 29 years until his death in 2000. Alawite teacher Muhammad Ibn Nusair, who died around in 883, led to a new sect which split from Ismailism, a Shiite cult of Islam. The sect was later called Alawite, named after Ali, Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law, a caliph from A.D. 656-661).

Alawites retained many non-Islamic beliefs which have not been written down but were rather handed down as secrets by their religious leaders. Alawites do not have mosques, only devotional rooms. They disapprove of Islamic religious duties, such as praying five times a day and fasting during Ramadan.

Hafez al-Assad also was secretary general of the Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party. Under Hafez’ administration, Syria experienced increased stability, secularization and industrialization.

He never hesitated, however, to repress and eliminate opposition to his rule.

Wolf D. Fuhrig, a professor emeritus of political science and criminal justice, has been a columnist since 1981. This and other articles by him can be found online at www.independentcritic.com.